OiiA-Spinning-Cat-Lang: The First Meme-Inspired Programming Language

Inspiration

I was procrastinating on YouTube one day when I fell into the rabbit hole of watching the Oiia Cat meme (you know, that adorable spinning cat with the catchy music). After my 100th replay, I had this totally wild idea - what if I could turn this meme into a programming language? Most programming languages are so serious, but who says we can't code with cats? 🐱

What it does

OiiA is a stack-based programming language where everything revolves around the word "oiia". The number of "oiia"s in a line determines what operation you're performing. Here's what makes it unique:

• 4 oiias: Declares and assigns variables
• 5 oiias: Addition
• 6 oiias: Subtraction
• 7 oiias: Multiplication
• 8 oiias: Division
• 9 oiias: While loops
• 12 oiias: If-else conditions
• 3 oiias: The special command that opens the original Oiia Cat video (because why not?)

How we built it

I built this using Python because it's my go-to language for weird experiments. The interpreter uses:

• Regular expressions to parse the "oiia"s
• A stack-based system for arithmetic operations
• Separate stacks for control flow and loops
• The webbrowser module to unleash the spinning cat video whenever someone uses the output command

Challenges we ran into

• Figuring out how to make a meme into a legitimate programming language without it being complete chaos
• Debugging was wild because everything looks like "oiiaoiiaoiia" - try finding a typo in that!
• Making sure the stack operations work in the right order (turns out subtraction and division order actually matters)
• Explaining to my roommate why I was watching the spinning cat video on repeat at 3 AM

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Actually made a functioning programming language (still can't believe it works)
• Successfully integrated a meme into something technically useful
• Created probably the first programming language where watching a cat video is a valid output operation
• Managed to implement basic arithmetic, variables, and control flow using just variations of "oiia"

What we learned

• How interpreters work under the hood
• Stack-based programming concepts
• Regular expressions (finally had a reason to learn them properly)
• Sometimes the silliest ideas can turn into legitimate learning experiences
• The importance of coffee during late-night coding sessions

What's next for OiiA-Spinning-Cat-Lang

• Add functions (maybe call them "meow-thods"?)
• Create a proper IDE with syntax highlighting for different numbers of "oiia"s
• Add more meme-based commands (maybe integrate other cat memes?)
• Build a community of cat-loving programmers
• Maybe create a compiler to turn it into a proper executable language
• Add string operations (probably using "pspsps" as the string delimiter)
• Create a package manager called "yarn" (get it?)

This project taught me that programming doesn't always have to be serious to be functional. Sometimes the best way to learn is to do something completely ridiculous and see it through to the end. Plus, now I can officially put "Created a meme-based programming language" on my resume!

Built With

• pip
• pylint
• pypi
• pytest
• python
• setuptools
• twine
• vscode